Making presentations and conducting meetings are important aspects of many occupations. Executives make presentations to directors, managers conduct meetings with staff, salespersons make presentations to potential customers, doctors conduct meetings with nurses, lawyers make presentations to juries, and so on. A great many professionals conduct and attend meetings and presentations regularly. Much effort therefore goes into creating and delivering effective presentations and preparing for and conducting effective meetings.
With specialized software, conventional personal computers provide effective platforms for creating and conducting presentations and meetings. Currently available presentation program modules can turn a personal computer into a customized presentation system for creating and delivering slide presentations. Generally described, these presentation systems provide a specially designed, user-friendly, pallet of tools to assist in the creation of presentation slides to be subsequently displayed to an audience. These presentation systems also allow the slides to be sequentially presented to an audience, point-by-point and slide-by-slide, with color, animation, audio, and transition effects that enrich and enliven the presentation.
Presentations usually involve the use of visual aids such as slides. These slides contain information related to the subject of the presentation and can include text, charts, graphs and pictorial images. Many of these slides are created on computers using various computer programs. Slide presentation programs are computer programs that enable a user to create, edit, manage, and perform “presentations” on a computer. One example of a popular slide presentation program is Microsoft PowerPoint.RTM., available from Microsoft Corporation, of Redmond, Washington. Another powerful presentation tool is Lotus Freelance. A slide presentation includes a set of electronic “slides,” each slide corresponding to one screen or page of output. An electronic slide may also be converted to a 35 mm slide or overhead transparency and displayed in a standard slide projector or overhead projector. Each slide contains one or more objects, such as text, graphical images, or graphical animation. A slide may also include a sound object that is played when the slide is displayed during a “slide show” performance.
A slide presentation program performs a slide show by sequentially displaying a series of slides contained within the slide presentation. The slides are displayed on a display screen, which may be part of a computer monitor or a separate surface onto which an image is projected. During a performance of a slide show, a speaker controls the performance by invoking commands to advance the slide show. A command to the slide presentation program can be entered using a keyboard, a mouse, or other suitable input device. Alternatively, an author of a slide presentation can include slide “timings” with each slide. A slide timing corresponding to a slide indicates the number of seconds that the slide is displayed before the slide presentation program automatically advances to the next slide. During a performance of a slide show, the slide presentation program automatically advances to the next slide when the existing slide's timing ends.
A slide can include one or more display objects that are incrementally displayed during a slide show. For example, a slide may initially appear with one bullet item. Sequential advancement of the slide show causes additional bullet items to be displayed. Display objects, such as bullet items, that are incrementally displayed are referred to as “builds.” Builds ??
Presentation program resources have been developed to aid a user in developing a slide presentation. Each slide presentation contains a number of slides that display information, such as text, to an audience. In addition, each slide presentation can contain links to data (linked data) stored in an external source, such as a spreadsheet. The external source is referred to as a link source.
A link contains both a representation of the linked data and a reference to the linked data. The representation contains a static snapshot of the linked data, and as such, the representation must be updated periodically to reflect changes made to the linked data. Accessing the linked data via the reference to retrieve the latest version of the linked data performs an update. The representation is a pictorial representation, like a bitmap that describes a screen graphic, of how the linked data appeared on the computer display as of the last time the representation was updated. For example, when the linked data is a range of spreadsheet cells, the representation of the linked data would be the actual graphical depiction of the range of spreadsheet cells as it appears on the computer display. An example of a reference to linked data is a file name with a path and an indication of the specific linked data within the file. For example, the reference “C:.backslash.spreadsheets.backslash.financial.xls|A1:F1” indicates that the linked data comprises the cells “A1:F1” in the spreadsheet with the file name “financial.xls” at path “C:.backslash.spreadsheets.” When the representation is displayed, the representation is displayed to the audience as an integrated part of the presentation.
Computer programs often have associated data files that are processed by the computer program during a normal execution of the computer program. A data file can contain information that is processed and presented to a user either in a video presentation or an audio presentation, or a combination of video and audio. Slide presentation programs are examples of computer programs that process an associated data file.
Many times there is a need to modify or update a presentation slide. There may be new information related to the particular subject matter in the slide. In some instances, the audience may require the presentation of the information in a slightly different manner. For many companies, there may be need to present information contained on a presentation to an audience that speaks a different language from the original language contained in the slide. This language difference is becoming a more important issue in the business world.
Multi-national corporations conduct business throughout the world and in various languages. As a result, it is often necessary to communicate information generated in one language to persons in a second language. Therefore, a translation of the information has to occur at some point in the communication process. Because of the use of multiple languages in many business environments, many software application programs are developed with the intent that they will be used in a global economy, particularly in a network communication environment. In this environment, the network users can be located throughout the world. In order to increase business opportunities between companies and to enable the international users of the computer software resources to efficiently interact, the graphical interfaces/screen displays of the program may need to appear in the language of the foreign user. Various methods have been proposed for translating computer software resources. However, such methods can be expensive and time consuming, as it may be necessary to change the code of the software program. Moreover, such modifications may not be feasible, as the user may not have access to the program code. Thus, it is desirable to have a tool that enables the user to translate the graphical interfaces/screen displays of a software program without the need to modify or otherwise interact with the program code.
In response to the desire to translate slides, there have been some methods developed for translating the graphical user interface/screen displays without modification to the underlying application program. One method, described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,974,372 issued to Barnes et al, enables the user of the program to select screen displays for translation, gather the original text from the screen display, enter the equivalent foreign language and store the associated basic and foreign texts in memory for subsequent recall and use. In operation, this method stores original and various translated versions of a specific text in a table. Upon subsequent operation of the application program the message, which forms the screen to be displayed, will be intercepted. Subsequently, a search of the translation table for the text in the intercepted message is conducted. The matched text is replaced with the second language previously entered in the translation table. The translated message is then forwarded for display on the terminal screen. The method can either translate all designated application screens upon start up of the application program or can be individually translated as they appear on the terminal screen. Moreover, selectable words from selectable screen displays as well as selectable sub-screen displays associated therewith can be translated. Accordingly, one or more screen displays in the software program can be translated into one or more foreign languages according to the desires of the program user. In another slide translation method, text from a presentation slide is highlighted/selected and translated using translation programs. However, with this method, it may be necessary to repeat the translation process several times for one slide of a slide presentation when the slide has various groups of text on the slide.
In addition to the aforementioned tedious task of bit-by-bit translation of text, another problem with translating text in presentation slides is that the images in the slide may get repositioned in the slide during the re-insertion of the translated text into the slide. This situation can be problematic if the text space conflicts or overlaps the image space on the slide. Without adequate information about the proper positioning of the images on the slide, this translated text or slide image can be out of position with reference to the original presentation slide.
It is desirable to have a method that can translate presentation slide information from one language to a second language in an efficient and accurate and cost-effective manner. It is also desirable to have a slide translation method that can translate text from a presentation slide without concern about the proper positioning of the translated text in a translated version of an original slide presentation.